


The Smoke, The Feeling

by woollen_pharaohs



Series: Continuations of beautiful indie films [1]
Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Missing Scenes, Non-Chronological, Symbolism, or rather a theory of what happened leading up to the events of the film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 20:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8681824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs
Summary: Segments of povs from Roy, Lucas and Sarah theorising what happened prior to the events of the film.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh i'm actually quite happy with how the film ended on an ambiguous note. This is just my own headcanon theorising about why things were the way they were - with a little more roy/lucas than the movie let on!
> 
> I also wanted to explore the symbolism and themes in the film such as parenthood, the number 2, change, time and knowing/unknowing/belief.
> 
> Title is from Cloud Control's sad and dreamy song The Smoke, The Feeling.

**roy.**

Fingertips traipse over the back of the couch, tough fabric gives way to wear, and a tear, exposes the thick stuffing to the air. He’s wary that Lucas can’t take his eyes off him even though Alton is sitting across from him.

That will change.

Alton removes his goggles. Roy thumbs the rip, rips him back to an old memory. A tear in the leather of the car seat. The passenger window was still gone. Scars of a father who had no love left to give. The sun was setting, purple hummed over the horizon. The midnight stars bright in the summer breeze. Lucas kissed over his spine, over the bandages across his shoulder, his swollen jaw.

He put Lucas in danger and yet he worried about Lucas too much to remove himself. Loved Lucas too much and loved himself less. He’d clawed out and his fingers had found the tear in the seat cover, a moment of surprise between a head lost in passion.

That was real.

The starchy fabric of his bed in solitude was devoid of life and love but that was real too. It was his reality only a night ago.

Alton had taken his love, and given him love. After sharing, Lucas will love Alton too.

 

 

**lucas.**

Roy was forever quiet, but not wordless. He said more with his eyes. Watchful or alarmed. Some mistook his mumblings for shyness, but Roy spoke to Lucas in inaudible ways. Roy saw when people were hurting and he knew what to do. He was an empath. Roy felt. On another world to Lucas. Roy was always bright and always giving, and always quiet and knowing. Lucas was trained but no trainer knew how to care like Roy had cared for Lucas. 

After Roy's parents took him away, years later. Lucas would go down to the shooting range and fire bullet after bullet into the target. The bullets sunk into the thin film of paper and ricocheted off the concrete walls in a loud clamour. Roy's loudness was heard by one, maybe more, now, a lifetime away. It was his skill, proud to break and protect. Lucas could make Roy shout out his name in wet tongues, panting and ragged and cognizant to Lucas. Roy might’ve been gentle but he was in no way tameable. Roy was the still body of prey devising a million ways to not only escape, but to fight. The calm before the sweeping winds curled, swept away by passion and fierce love that Lucas missed. Howling whispers caught in the cold wind. 

A stormy night brewed a domestic in the west and Lucas took his first bullet. Hit him hard in the vest above his heart. He peeled off the vest in the empty locker room and the moment the lead peeled off his heart, he recalled the days when Roy loved him so much with a soft shock. He cried, years and years ahead.

 

**sarah.**

She had lost her purpose for six years. When Sarah left the Ranch it was of her own free will. She disappeared in the day, cloaked by nothing and everything at once. She was decried a mother who abandoned her child. Like her own mother. It was only after leaving did Sarah understand and forgive. 

She lived with her mother in sedated silence. A lonely job slowly grew wealth enough to rent a small two bedroom. She made up Alton’s room. Made it up every day. It won’t be dusty when he comes. It will be homely. Real.

She hoped he would come sooner, but she knew exactly when it would happen. Two years, one night, as the lord wishes. And yet she wishes otherwise.

She sits on Alton’s small bed. Her purpose was always Alton. Her loss was her attachment to her own passage, not his. She was born under the eyes of faint glowing and gave birth to strength. Alton's last gift will renounce her from old ways, and if not, the blood lines coursing through the earth will throb the pain of loss of life. She unties her plait. Brushes her hair from curly to frizz to tame. And reties.

 

 

**roy.**

Four years pass as their control is slowly usurped.

Roy is quiet. He is protecting in his own way, but he was never one to push. He was only one to do what was needed.

Every night he tucks Alton in. Pulls the goggles over his eyes and the muffs over his ears. He kisses Alton on the forehead. Share a lightless look. In the morning, the women wake Alton and serve him warm milk and bread. And then take him down to the office where the pastor watches over him. And he does not see Roy until just before the rays of the sun start to peek over the horizon. Sometimes not until after, when the earth begins to shake and the skies come crashing down. 

The dates start to get closer. Once the future, now the present. The pastor makes up a new bedroom for Alton, closer to the research, and Roy does not see him except at Church.

Sarah cannot cope. She misses him and it’s worse when she can see him but cannot speak to him. She cannot watch him fluctuate between a world she was once weakly attached to. Roy knows Alton must help Sarah escape unseen. A boy that young can't know her pain, and yet he does. He knows the mortality of pain, and loss, and comfort, and love. 

A few days after her disappearance, Roy awaits her message. He is sent a letter, received by the pastor. 

For two years Roy lives in solitude. A small window lights on to the ashen fields of the Ranch. A steel door opens only for meals, and for Church. He is escorted for the sermon readings while rumours whisper on his back. Alton sits in the front row and when they stand for psalms, Roy lives for the brief window of visibility where he can spot Alton turning. Momentary eye contact. It's enough, until it isn't. 

 

 

**sarah.**

Sarah didn’t know what she was but she knew what she needed.

She’d spouted the coordinates two years before Alton would come into being. Incoherent, jumbled in the way of numbers and letters and foreign words. She had a sense of it, though. A direction, a feeling, an idea of the future.The song lines of the world overlapped beneath the Tomlin’s residence. The electrician drove her all the way.

Her ears were bleeding when she stood on the doorstep. She did not wish for their charity. She only wished to speak with them for a moment. Or rather, show them. She held Mr and Mrs Tomlin’s hands in their living room. Showed them and made them believe. In years to come, they would believe unequivocally, far beyond the simple expression Sarah could share, to an encompassing feeling her future son will project. Sarah knew it would happen and knew what needed to happen. And so there was no force required.

 

**lucas.**

Roy didn’t have to tell Lucas where they were going. Lucas would’ve liked to know but he doesn’t have to know. He believes in Alton. He trusts Roy, too. Always. Endless.

Roy always knew the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing wasn't always the best thing to do. Left Lucas empty for a decade wondering why Roy left with his parents, without a question. To a ranch. A known cult. Lucas never visited, out of anger. And sadness. And abandonment. He thought he'd never hear from Roy again since the day Lucas' father swore he'd put Roy in an early grave if he got close to Lucas again. 

 

Lucas tried to understand Roy’s actions. It only made him weak. On his knees, thirsting for Roy's arms around his waist. All Lucas wanted to do was find Roy and tell him it wasn’t the right thing to do. To leave. It wasn't his choice to make. It was theirs. Roy had to know that Lucas would do anything for Roy. If it meant moving to the other side of the Earth, he would do it. If it meant bridging to another dimension, he would do it.

Years passed and confusion and rage turned into complacency under his father’s rule. He let Roy leave his life, like his father wanted. Became a state trooper, bought a house near his parent's, married who they wanted... A faceless woman light as dust in the space where Roy would lie. 

Roy smile softly, warmly, when he sees the mother.

They do not hug. They do not kiss.

He asks, “How are you?”

She says, “I missed him.”

The child between them.

Lucas can see the love in Roy’s eyes. May it be for her, or for the child, or both. 

They sleep, apart. The couple, together. In the evening, Roy blinks from sleep. A sliver of tenderness, an offer in his dishes, dulled by the crushing night and undusted recollections.  

 

 

**sarah.**

Her mother believed that in giving birth, she rid herself of the curse. That what she could share, was a burden. Solace for beached whales with dud legs. 

She put Sarah up for adoption. Calvin had finished building an extension to his house, sandalwood thick with oils and Indian blues. Sarah turned two and tore a hole in the framework. Blue rusted, ruin. 

They were scared, at first. Her tongues frightened them the most. They realized she recited the radio. They realized it wasn't always so.

Sarah had a sense of something. Fluids at her fingertips. Like the pads of her fingers on top a still surface, of water, of oxygen absent liquid, tension unbroken when she pushed through. The ley lines attracted her but she did not weigh enough to be pulled.

It was more of a feeling than a specific image. It gave people comfort, in hand holding. She felt as if she would grow stronger. But she would only grow weaker, as she got closer. Until she didn't belong at all. Though she cannot share her vision, soon those around her will see it through blaring light. And for moments in time, all in the vicinity will experience the bridged connection, but she knows she will not arrive there for some time. 

The location would not yet be known. Someone will know decipher it, and she will go there with whom is meant to pass. She won’t be with Calvin, nor her powerless mother, and it won’t be her purposed lover, either. He will be close, but not close enough. 

She will be in the water with her child. He will be eight years old.

He will go, and they will not see her leave.

She knew all this, and she would not tell a soul not bright enough.

Only those who needed to know.

 

 

**lucas.**

Lucas watches Roy’s family knowing only half the story.

Roy holds Sarah’s hand at her place.

They would’ve made a great family.

 

 

**sarah.**

Sarah didn’t know what she was but she knew what was needed. Alton was choking on the crumbling asphalt and she knew he needed water. Not to drink but to go to the cave beneath the forest. A lake spread out beneath the Everglades. And he slept close to home.

She lost her powers years ago but she felt the magnetism. She was on his heels the whole time, the swamp beneath their feet. Jesus walked on water and when the world above ours bridged, the Everglades was drained. The beings walked with him and Sarah remained unseen. She fears the government may take Roy but they will find nothing in him except their son watching over him in the mirror of his eyes.

 

 

**roy.**

Sometimes she would relay radio signals, sometimes predictions of the future. Sarah knew names and titles of events which had not yet even been conceived. She had a glint in her eye not like Alton’s beams but she could hold your hand and make you believe. She shared a feeling, shared a peace she felt that was not theirs to have and not hers either. She didn’t know who she was even after she had passed on the unknown.

She had picked Roy and Roy hadn’t understood why until he held her hand for the first time. He understood his destiny through her. But the care people took about her alienated him. She was not a person but a revered idea. Despite her ability to connect with him, he could not connect to her. 

Sex was quite clinical with her. She gave birth, 27 weeks premature, her body bloodless and weak. Calvin did not seem to care that she almost died. It was only after this birth did Roy get to know Sarah as a person, rather than their saviour, for the birth brought two new lives. One, Alton, latent in power, and Sarah, powerless. Drained. 

She was weak for many weeks. She began to get healthy only as slowly as Alton. For the first time, Roy knew what she needed because she was herself. She was real. Roy gave Sarah love and Sarah loved him, for his care of her person. 

She lay on the sanitary bed in the Ranch for weeks and weeks and weeks. And Roy held her hand. Made her meals. Read to her in a voice she could not yet understand. Ten weeks later Alton was healthy enough to be taken out of his plastic box. Sarah held him in her arms for the first time, and Roy was the first to see her smile through her eyes.

 

**sarah.**

Without her powers she knew that it would not matter whether she was present or not. She was not needed after the first two years.

Sarah loved her son but she could not watch him develop as she was. He would not be himself for many years to come. Lost between an abyss of unknown. Tossed between men looking for answers and pushing for validity.

Roy will look after him. And after Roy, many parents will look after him, too. Many will bathe him and dress him and love him. And Alton will show them the world in return.

Sarah’s mother gave her the taste of the bliss of another life, but she purged herself of the temptation. She bound herself to human life and accepted it willingly. For many years Sarah was lost. Then for two years she knew her purpose was to bring Alton to life. Her humanity was not important after birth in the eyes of most. Her presence at the ranch became irrelevant.

Instead, her importance lay in in taking Alton to where he needed to be, six years away.

She looked forward to seeing him again. To housing him for one night only, in a bedroom made only for him. And when he has done what he needs to do, her rebirth will commence.

 

 

**roy.**

He is not permitted to attend Church the closer the dates become. Six days before and Alton makes sure the door to Roy’s comfortable prison is unlocked.

“Dad, we need to go now.”

They are not seen as Sarah was not seen. Cloaked in another realm.

They run through the forest. Alton knows the way. He tells Roy there’s a place he needs to go, that only Sarah can get him there. That they must all go together.

The Ranch is devoid of transport, save a diesel truck. They run through the fields until they reach a distant neighbour’s paddock. Alton starts up a motorized bicycle. It runs out of treading on the edge of town. Roy walks through the night with Alton’s hand in his all the way to Lucas’ doorstep. Same place, same car parked in the driveway. The window is fixed up, but not the dent in the frame where Lucas’ Dad had fired a shot gun. The historic sound of it rings in his ears. 

“Roy?”

Roy holds Lucas’s gaze, cups Alton’s shoulders in his palms.

“We need your help,” Alton says.

“You’re in trouble,” Lucas says to Roy.

“Yes,” Alton replies, “You’re going to want to take a seat.”

 

 

**lucas.**

Roy hasn’t changed, but he’s changed in ways Lucas couldn’t have imagined. It wasn’t the Ranch that changed Roy, it was Alton.

“Then, how do you know Roy?”

Lucas fiddles with the wires, tries to keep his voice from cracking, “We grew up together. We were real close for a long time til his parents moved him out to the Ranch. And then we fell off.”

He didn’t understand why Roy went with his parents until he met Alton. And he didn’t know that back then, it was Sarah who walked into the Tomlin’s house and showed them what Alton showed Lucas. Maybe he would’ve been able to forgive Roy a lot quicker, save himself from endless pain if he’d believed there was some truth in cults.

 

 

**roy.**

He lets Lucas see for longer than he should have.

“That’s enough,” He tells Alton as he scoops the boy up into his arms.

Alton starts screaming, his eyes go red and Roy sits down on the couch, cradles Alton in his lap and shields Alton’s eyes against his chest.

“It’s okay,” he coos repeatedly.

Alton sweats. Roy smooths his palm across Alton’s forehead, pushing back the damp hair. It’s been almost two years since he’s held Alton. Almost ten years since he’s seen Lucas.

Lucas is still speechless when Roy has Alton calm.

The goggles go back on. Alton wraps his arms around Roy’s neck and hugs him, sobbing slightly.

Lucas finally speaks, “Is that… what was that?”

Roy rubs Alton’s back. He glances at the light peeking through the closed curtains.

“The sun,” Alton says quietly.

“I’m going to need some duct tape.”

Lucas squints. Drums the arms of his chair with his fingers for a brief moment, then nods and goes toward the kitchen. He pulls out a drawer and comes back with the tape. Roy holds Alton with one hand and takes the tape with his other.

“He can’t sleep here. Too many electronics.”

“There’s the bedroom,” Lucas offers.

Roy nods and scoops Alton up, follows Lucas to a familiar bedroom. His legs are stiff when he walks in. The cold night air still chill on the back of his neck. Memories from a decade ago spring to life when he carefully lays Alton down on Lucas’ bed. He closes his eyes briefly so as not to linger. Then gets to work taping down the curtains and sealing out the light. He unplugs Lucas’ digital alarm clock and the bedside lamp and brings them out into the hall.

Lucas gives him a look and Roy says, “He’ll break them.”

Sleep strangles him, starting with his feet, and so he returns to the bedroom to curl up with his son.

Lucas catches him by the arm, “Roy.”

He stops. Sleep tingles in his fingertips.

“You didn’t tell me you had a son.”

Roy mumbles, “Alton would’ve-”

Lucas snaps, “ _You_ didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t. Alton would have shown you everything,” then he adds, “Do you believe him?”

Roy feels Lucas’ stare on him. Roy questions belief and with his eyes he asks for forgiveness. He wonders if the hurt of betrayal is strong enough to overpower Alton’s promise.

Then, after some time, Lucas negates what Roy had feared.

 

 

**lucas.**

He thinks he must be dreaming. After all these years, Roy is delivered to his doorstep right when he needed him. Right when he life was warily becoming nothing and meaningless.

His parents always thought they knew what was best for him.

It wasn’t Alton who changed his opinion entirely. It was Roy coming back to him, reminding him of what was lost and what could be found. And if he was going to give anything to this world it would all be for Roy.

 

 

**roy.**

Time has never been his ally.

Roy sleeps on top of Lucas’ bed sheets with Alton beside him for hours throughout the day. He’s nervous about any sparks of light poking through his hasty tape work.

He sleeps restlessly. Alton shivers and then goes still in deep sleep.

Lucas said he would help and Roy has to believe in that.

There’s a knock at the front door. Through thin walls, Roy hears keys working in a lock. A raised voice.

Roy pulls himself off the bed and quietly exits the room.

“You have to go,” Lucas is saying hastily.

“Why are you saying that? I’m here to make you lunch, remember? Why are you pushing me, stop pushing me Lucas.”

“Mom, you can’t be here. I have _people_ over.”

“What people? You shouldn’t invite people over when you have plans already made. Lucas, what – oh. It’s _you_.”

Lucas’ mother’s face goes sour the moment she lays her eyes on Roy lurking in the hallway.

“Mom,” Lucas says sternly, “It’s not what you think. Roy needed help.”

Lucas’s mother scoffs, “Did you finally escape from that nut house and come crawling back to reality?”

The door to Lucas’ bedroom cracks open and Alton starts to step out. It takes one second for Roy to register the warm sunlight spilling in from behind Lucas’ mother.

“Alton, no! Get back in the bedroom!”

Alton wanders toward him deaf from sleep and as Roy moves to get Alton away, Lucas’ mother dashes forward to poke her nose around the corner.

“You kidnapped a _child_ from the Ranch too?!”

Roy twists on his feet and barks at her to get back. Just as he does, a fraction of light imparts on Alton’s face and he collapses on the ground. The whole house starts tumbling. Roy throws himself over Alton to shield him from the light.

She shrieks and runs for the door, she cries, “Your Father will hear about this Lucas!”

Lucas kicks the door shut. The moment the house stops shaking, he apologises profusely.

“It’s fine,” Roy says, “That old thing out front still work?”

Roy lifts Alton up in his arms and goes to the bedroom. Lucas follows close behind.

“Dad, we need to go,” Alton cries.

“I know,” Roy coos, “Cover your head with the blanket.”

“Where are we going?” Lucas asks.

Roy turns around and looks at Lucas.

The walls change colour in memory. White to blue. They were young but they had a life together. They could have had a family too, if things had gone differently. He kissed Lucas many times in this room. A different bed, same spot. Smells how the old one used to smell. They comforted each other here, and out in the living room, in Lucas’ beat up car and Roy wonders why Lucas kept that, of all things.

“It’s a long drive.”

“I’ll bring him something to read.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked my take. Feel free to discuss your theories too!


End file.
